Twelfth century intellectual history

Let me talk about the twelfth-century intellectual history, in particular, the so-called controversy/contention between the "school" and the "cloister."

The twelfth century is not necessarily the most interesting period, and intellectual history probably not the most interesting area, to study, but the twelfth-century intellectual history presents one of the most fascinating historiographical problem in medieval studies. The obvious reason would be that scholars in this field are most important contributors to the "revolt of medievalists" in last century. The justification of medieval studies as serious historical enquiry finds its first/best advocates here.

The most popular grand narrative is, of course, Haskins' "Twelfth-century Renaissance," which focuses on Latin literature and classicism. His anti-Burckhardtian agenda was to attack the enemy on his own terrain by claiming that there was a real 'revival' of classical culture in the twelfth century. This grand conception of "renaissance" can be put into the frame of contemporary interests. For example, the Italians are not particularly interested in a renaissance of the 12th, because they’ve already got a real one; the Americans popularized this idea, attempting to find roots of modernity in medieval past when they actually have no medieval past; the French are pretty enthusiastic, the principle is “Don’t let the Germans win.” An extreme case would be that one pre-eminent French scholar has identified at three separate Carolingian “renaissances.” They don’t like the idea of “Ottonian renaissance,” which sounds distinctively German, so they substitute it with the “third” Carolingian Renaissance. When Americans scholars now are fairly content with dismissing the Renaissance idea in textbooks and shift their energy on other subjects, the French are still producing all kinds of books titled “twelfth-century Renaissance.”

Some serious criticisms have been proposed since the publication of Haskins' book. First, his "classical" bias has been widely criticized. Submitting the 12th to the "renaissance" narrative does not do justice to its own originality and distinctiveness; second, his "renaissance" is too "secular," so we have, for example, Giles Constable's "twelfth-century Reformation," along with many other Catholic scholars, adding the religious/devotional dimension; Richard Southern's "Scholastic Humanism" emphasizes some mental propensity for uniformity, universality, and rational enquiry. (of course, scholars have been very busy adding other aspects, such as "individualism," or "affective theology," among other things).

The scholarship about "renaissance" and its accretions/revisions more or less exhausted its energy in the late 1980s (as far as I know). We all know that the greater the extension of a term, the less contained within its comprehension. People use less the large/ contentious constructions/ categories such as "renaissance" or "humanism," but shift their attention to some more handy sub-categories, such as "latin" vs. "vernacular," "literacy" vs. "orality," and also, the dichotomy interests me, "monastic" vs. "scholastic."

The problem of "monasticism" and "scholasticism" in the twelfth century has it own tradition of scholarship, at first independent from the "renaissance" narrative but then quickly integrated itself into the mainstream discussion. This dichotomy, unlike the modern invention of "renaissance" or "humanism," was common rhetoric among monks in that period. Before the second wold war or even the second Vatican council in 1960s, monasticism had been an exclusive area for Catholics, in many cases, professed religious. For example, the most important scholars in medieval monasticism like David Knowles and Jean Leclercq are Benedictines themselves, and Etienne Gilson and Chenu are Catholics. Studies in monasticism has been integrated to mainstream or "secular" research interest in perhaps less than fifty years. Studies in scholasticism has undergone similar evolution. Neo-Thomism was one of the most important catalyst.

These originally "Catholic" interests in monasticism and scholasticism coincide with some "trends" or "fashions" in medieval studies, such as the new interests in religious/church history, literary analysis/linguistic turn, or high/clerical culture vs. popular religion. As Gabrielle Spiegel and Paul Freedman have argued, since the 1980s, there has been a trend of the rediscovery of "alterity," "otherness" even the "grotesque," which partly explains the change of position of monastic studies from defensive to offensive. In traditional catholic scholarship, the early medieval monasticism are merely preparations for the Golden Age of the thirteenth century scholasticism. But now, social historians find monastic culture has a more interesting/complex relationship with the society and thus sometimes a better reflection of the "mentality" of the age; cultural/feminist historians find monastic existential/devotional experience more appealing than the dry logic of the universities.

Unlike in the early or later middle ages, there is general consensus that the twelfth century is indeed a significant transitional period in medieval history. What they differ is how to categorize/define the changes that occurred. Tired of grand/vaguely defined terminology, people found that maybe "universities" and "monasteries" as different environment with different culture are much more convenient and clearly defined than those-ism words. It has been agreed upon that early middle ages intellectual activities sporadically happened in several monastic centers, while the thirteenth century was predominantly the age of the universities. The twelfth was something in between; the dramatic shift of intellectual authority from monasteries to universities involves significant intellectual, spiritual, institutional, as well as economic changes.

Two general tendencies on this issue can be found: (1) to emphasize the reciprocity and commonality of the monasteries and the schools; many aspirations were not distinctively "monastic" or "scholastic," but shared by all; their differences have been downplayed to mere something derivative from different "environment"--one more introspective and humble, the other more aggressive and competitive. And their boundaries were porous and fluid. (2) to give more narrow definitions of the two, for example, "scholasticism" is now less defined as an overarching mental attitudes toward universe, or nature and divine, as Southern has defined, but is more restricted as some professionalized/ institutionalized pedagogical method. Both monks and school masters strived to write systematic theology in the twelfth century, but the school master, with more classroom practice and teaching experience, happened to be more successful. Therefore, the traditional grand narratives about the clash between "humanism" and "scholasticism," "devotion" vs."science," "aesthetic" vs."logic" now is simplified as different pedagogical orientations due to different institutional milieux.